He strongly defends the constitution and the rule of law, so he’s not a totally bad guy (unlike many of the current politicians who believe that the US president should be able to do whatever he wishes).

He wants to refrain from “helping” other countries with their “defense” – such help from the US has caused most of the wars and terrorism around the world since WW2.

He wants to reduce military spending to 1/3 current levels (he could reduce it to 1/10 current levels and still be able to prevent a combined attack by Russia and China).

He wants to restore liberty.

He seems to be in support of repealing most drug laws – but his statements weren’t clear.

Here’s the bad:

He wants to remove income tax and give the smallest possible government – no consumer protection laws among other things.

He thinks that hospitals should be run by churches and have no government funded medical system.

He doesn’t want restrictions on pharmacists who refuse to sell certain drugs (IE the contraceptive pill) – but with no restrictions on who can be a pharmacist such things could be bought without prescription even…

Here’s the ugly:

He claims that guns on planes might have prevented 9-11.

Still, he’s a lot better than any other Republican who seems to be in the running.

16 comments to Ron Paul

Ron Paul is not some kook fringe candidate. He specializes in economics. He knows more about economics than any other congressman. He doesn’t want an income tax because he understands that everyone, including those at the very bottom, will be far richer without government trying to “help” them. Government is what has caused our skyrocketing prices in health care, more government is not the solution. He wants all drugs legalized, who cares about restrictions on pharmacists when you can get it anywhere, as you point out.

It is absolutely true that guns on planes could have prevented 9/11. Terrorists would not plan such attacks if they know that there may be people with guns on a plane.

PK: Allowing guns on planes is a fringe idea. The increased prices of health care in the US are due to the ease of suing doctors and the lack of government support. Health care is reasonably cheap and of high quality in Australia due to government involvement.

As for the government making people poor, that doesn’t seem to happen in Northern Europe (which outperforms the US by every metric that matters).

Who cares about restrictions on pharmacists? The people who are injured or killed by bad medicine dispensed by quacks.

If a gun-fight was to start on a plane involving several people with automatic weapons it seems quite unlikely that the plane would remain in the air for long. Taking over the plane and using it as a missile would be more difficult, but taking the plane into the ground at high speed would be easier.

Chris: There’s a lot of political discussion on Planet Debian, Ron has enough of a presence that whether you love him or hate him, he has to get a mention.

bi: While I don’t think much of Ron I don’t believe that he is just trying to play to idealogues. I believe that he is genuine in his stated plans. His plans are mostly silly (IMHO) but a hell of a lot better than Bush et al…

Oh my lord. Ron Paul is just as phony as the frontrunners when it comes to his “defense of liberty”. Aside from being so rabidly anti-abortion that it’s basically the one thing he thinks the government should restrict, he’s also quite keen on the idea that the government shouldn’t be forcing, say, bus drivers to allow black people on board. And this is quite aside from the way he got elected; rather than actually running on a Libertarian ticket, he joined the Republican party to get the free ride that comes from that in Texas. Fortunately his insane followers are a minority, even in the States.

The lesser of two evils is definitely a generic incompetent conservative. The place would look like Mad Max after paul was finished with it.

bret: I summarised the video with as much accuracy as possible. If my summary is incorrect then anyone can easily point out the section of the video that contradicts my post. I may have made a mistake in some part of the summary, but you can be certain that I’m not going to lie about something that can be easily disproven by a video that I cite as a reference.

If my points were in any way inaccurate then please give me a reference as to which point in the google video disproves them. I repeated nothing that was heard elsewhere. Prior to watching the google interview I had heard nothing substantial about Ron Paul other than that he was a libertarian with a decent chance of winning back the Republican party. I repeated nothing heard elsewhere (either good or bad) and simply summarised what Ron himself said.

As for my opinions (the labels of “bad” and “ugly”), you are entitled to disagree with them (I have friends who would regard all the points in my post as being “good”) but you can’t accuse me of dishonesty.

Incidentally did you notice that the “good” section of my post comprised more than half the content and was at the top?

bret: You accuse me of doing a dis-service to my country and yours. I accuse you of doing a dis-service to the Ron Paul campaign – are you really trying to support him or is this a false-flag attack on him from a Neo-Con?

Chris: if Ron is going to abide by and support the US constitution (which is one of his stated aims) then his ability to inflict damage on the US will be greatly limited. The damage caused by the Neo-Cons would be much less if they played by the rules.

As for being like “Mad Max”, that would be a temporary state of affairs until the population decreased enough. A functional government is not required in all situations, it’s only really required if you want a high population density that is sustainable long-term.

“No consumer protection laws” doesn’t quite hold true. Laws against fraud, breach of contract, and criminal negligence work nicely in many situations. In my opinion, any “consumer protection”-related lawsuit that *doesn’t* qualify under laws like those likely stems from the common blame-avoiding behavior of idiotic, Darwin-award-attempting people. Many product and service lawsuits have legitimate claims, and many consist of people playing the lawsuit lottery; I think that well-founded laws like the ones I mentioned draw a clearer line between the two.

Regarding your comment about lack of prescriptions: possibly I didn’t parse it correctly, but it seems incongruous with your classification of repealing drug laws under “good”. Both of these seem like related items: removing laws designed to have the government protect people from themselves. Why do you want to allow people to purchase known-harmful drugs, but not allow them to purchase arbitrary formerly-prescription drugs which might help *or* harm? Yes, some idiots will self-medicate, and some unsafe drugs will appear, but sane people will continue to seek medical advice before doing so, and some drugs will voluntarily seek the seal of approval of some FDA-like private agency to improve their trustworthy image.

I still think he’s playing to ideologues. There’s no reply in which he’s not simply regurgitating libertarian doctrine (at least not in the first half of the Google interview).

And what’s more, when he was asked about whether he’d allow gay marriage, he said he believes everyone should have freedom of association, and “people can call it whatever they want”. Why the need for this gobbledygook? If he’s supportive of gay marriage, why doesn’t he simply say that and be done with it? I’m inclined to think he’s just sending a coded message to those who want to allow same-sex “civil unions” (which are marketed as giving couples the same rights as in marriage, except that’s false).

And what’s more, when he was asked about whether he’d allow gay marriage, he said he believes everyone should have freedom of association, and “people can call it whatever they want”. Why the need for this gobbledygook?

Not gobbledygook; standard libertarian position, carefully worded to not offend people. In general, libertarians believe that the government should not recognize *any* kind of marriage; marriage just represents a contract between individuals. However, phrasing it like that would offend many conservatives, who for some reason think that having the government recognize their marriage gives them some useful benefit over a private arrangement.